Higher

(-70)

We finally managed to graduate from high school. It is an achievement, something to be proud of and worth showing-off. It is a time when people would post everything, lots of photos and prayers on social media. I used to be one of those people.

I would lather my wall with images, would send whatever form of gratitude I could find to those who I thought encouraged me. I would have taken a commemorative picture with my class and printed it out, a new addition to an album I have been keeping since I was a junior high school student.

But now it doesn't seem... Exciting to me anymore.

It probably never was, and I was simply pretending to have gotten hyped up over these minor things that normal people would usually be so eager to partake in. Maybe I was never 'myself' then. Maybe I was an extreme pretender I haven't noticed I was not the same, until I came across a trigger that led my memories back to the right place.

There was conversation beside me, but I didn't pay any attention to it. I responded, but it wasn't the kind of response that would have usually came from me. I would have answered with such vigorousness, it would lead one to think I was very happy with my life.

But no.

I can't confirm that last bit, although I can assure you that I haven't really been paying attention to anything lately, and that I kind of just respond in a sense. I don't know how long I've been doing this, nor can I determine whether or not this is actually who I am anymore. I can't really make sure I knew that at all, and the thought that the person who cried on Len's hospital bed, or the person who had fun on an outing with friends, or the person who approached a quiet little kid in class to befriend him, might be a fake, is not giving me the slightest bit of comfort.

I couldn't quite sew the pieces together, as if it were a dress torn to shreds under an untamed dog's supervision. It was an odd thing to compare it to, but it was as if my life was this dress sewn together from scrap material collected from the neighbors. I can't imagine the disappointment of the old lady who found it remarkably ruined by the fangs of such an animal, which can be placed beside Oliver.

My life was the piece of handiwork. One could call it art if they knew how much beauty there was in a sporadically-patterned cloth, but that is one thing I cannot be quite sure of, either. Oliver was the set of sharp teeth, who made the old lady, me, realize that things should stay apart if they were meant to be apart. Things should stay mundane or unreal if they were made to be so.

The dog was my stupidity (or maybe intellect?), which sank the fangs onto the fabric.

Basically, I unwound my own reality.

Not all people can do that.

I'm pretty sure I was the only one.

Even so, now that I try to think about it, I can't remember even half of my life. What have I been doing when I was an elementary schooler? What did I call my mother before she had issued a divorce with my dad? What sports did I play, what my favorite colors and food had been, what kind of a child I was, basically.

Was I even conscious and alive before I met Oliver and became his long-time friend?

On the way home, my dad having treated the two of us to a barbecue despite his busy schedule (which had him going back and forth from Tokyo to Saitama), silence lingered. For me it was a silence out of the natural will to keep my mouth shut. I could sense it was different for Oliver, as he was clenching, then unclenching, his pale fists, his eyes trained on the ground.

I couldn't make sure if he was happy, or was about to cry. I could never make sure with this despicable monkey, but a little into the night, we found ourselves sitting on a bench drinking soda from the nearby vending machine. He was still acting in that same way, although we had managed to initiate conversation. It was nothing that had served me particular joy, or interest for that matter, but it looked to me as if he was trying to lose himself in our small talk.

Yes, he had himself to lose. He had attempted to lead something which had not been there, initially, into a void of gyrating blackness which had been the summary of his existence not long before. Or do I know that? He was beginning to scare me, something that would have done the same were I my put-together self, and if he was the same hollow creature.

With that glint of being alive in his eyes, he asked me, "What do you want to do now?"
"Who knows? Maybe I'll be taking over my dad's business. Why?" I replied casually, crushing the tin can under my fingers and palm, then tossing it into the bin to my right. I nearly missed, and the fact that I didn't had brought me relief.

"Just curious. You know, I have something I want to tell you."

That was odd.

He had expression.

Emotion.

There was sincerity in his words no matter how hard I tried to banish it. I don't know how quickly the years passed, or how slowly, but the thought that it changed him so much to this extent was something I couldn't bear to think of.

It means I changed at some point as well, and that was instilling fear into my mind. Was it change, or, as I have said earlier, an unravelling of how reality was for me? Was it the same for him? Should I respect him for that, should I respect myself for that, or should I begin to question the entities of life about their unruly decisions?

Was I dealing with a blessing, or something horrendous, absolutely demonic?

Resolute to survive this uncanny situation, I leaned back on the bench and took a deep breath.

"I'm listening. I'm listening."